Sorry, I'm not sure if we are arguing the same thing. I'm saying BM doesn't benefit much from Rapid Fire. I have no problems with the 2.7 speed and BM, I'm just saying that it doesn't get as much damage out of Rapid Fire as a MM.

That 1.4 isn't a good thing. With 100ms of lag, you are only getting 22.2% out of 40% of your rapid fire. BM wastes almost half of your Rapid Fire Haste if you keep using steady.

Which is why I said I was giving you "part" of my strat. Not going to spoon feed it.
But if you actually think about it for a bit, you should be able to take what I already said and work out an incredibly good/efficient way to keep your pet up and not stoned in gruul.
It's really not that difficult.


You're right that you won't get as much benefit out of Rapid fire if it pushes you below a speed that you can hold a rotation..


But you could simply switch to a slower weapon right before popping RF. (if you had that luxury)

Glad Xbow = 3.2 speed / (1.15 quiver * 1.2 SS * 1.4 RF) = 1.66 speed
YES PLZ!

Now if only I had the time to grind for it

I have a few fundamental questions regarding BM. Like the original poster I have been marks for a while and have been reluctant to give that up, despite a lot of evidence that BM may be the best damage build.

1) What trinkets are best for BM. My preliminary inclination is that you want possibly Daggerspine trophy, Bloodlust Brooch, Abacus of violent odds, or Mark of Conquest.
Which 2 of these would be best? Daggerspine trophy seems really strong if you can combine it with aspect of the hawk and get some nice rolling procs. Bloodlust brooch combined with a 4 minute rapid fire cooldown allows you to have some nice interaction with TBW.

2) What is the best pet? I have a windserpent and a cat. I don't want to level a ravager only to find out they are not very good. An owl also provides good utility and good damage.

3) What macros are good for Beast Mastery come 2.1? I saw one floating around that macro'ed steady and auto together that also had kill command, and lightning breath in it on cast random.

4) Seems some people suggest stacking just AP and Agi. Is this really the best? It seems like you want to run Imp Hawk, not viper.

5) What is the ideal bow? I have both Sunfury and Gladiator's. It seems if you had daggerspine trophy and imp Hawk there's a good chance of having one haste effect beyond Serpent's Swiftness. Does this justify Gladiators or is Sunfury still better?

5) BM seems terrible for 5v5 arena (possibly good for 2v2). Is this true. It just seems without the burst and without reliable interupts the build would not perform at a high level.

I'm sorry that I posted mostly questions.

It's not as bad as most people let on. 99% of your Hunter abilities are the same. BM is less susceptible to being gayed around pillars, since your pet will chew hard on them wherever they run. BM is at a disadvantage on the pillars in Blade's Edge. It's a trade off.

It's true that BM is under-represented in top 5v5 teams, but you should check out the hunter "Discipleh," who is usually specced 41/5/15 (not at the time of this post, however) and runs a top-5 5v5 team in his battlegroup.

Consider that team's class matrix, and what role a BM hunter would play within that.

The Iron Colonel asks the question I want to know, too. How do we know "wtf we are doing" as a BM hunter? Having never been one, I don't really have a good idea how to guage my own gear's suitability, nor how to look at someone's armory and know that they're geared well versus poorly.

With Marks, as long as they have decent +hit, ~20-22% crit, and 2000-2300 AP, I figure they're un-noobish.
For Survival, I'm looking for ~25%+ crit (more as gear permits of course ) and a truckload of agility.
For Beast Mastery, how do I analyze this?

I think I have a handle on making a good BM spec vs a poor one, but gear is throwing me for a loop.

What about Efficiency VS Imp Hunter's Mark? If you're firing 20% faster with more Quick Shot procs and losing more mana is it not better to have your pet lose 110 AP so you can continue to fire off steadys?

The thing about Mark of Conquest is that you are attacking very fast with low mana shots. a 2.70 with iAotH hits every 0.906 seconds on average. At an average of 15mana per hit (based on 10% proc rate) that's over 80mp5. It's more mana than Aspect of the Viper. I'd definitely Go with the Broach as well, since it will go so nicely with TBW.

Don't base your bow speed around a trinket. 2.6 is the best, 2.7 is ok. 2.8 and above has the disadvantage of only getting 7 hastened shots inside an iAotH proc instead of 8 and it will lose you about .5% haste. Also you will get in fewer steady shots.

I'm guessing BM is for low-latency hunters who are very good at twitch gameplay then? Since MM has a lot more wiggle-room for error. From what you posted above you're stating that the Gladiator Xbow would actually lose PVE dps in shot rotations over a longer duration, correct?

I have the framework for a Pet DPS calculator. Is there a good resource kicking arround that has pet damage formulae like base damage etc? Petopedia has plenty of formulae but no DPS ones.


If that's true, it's really too bad. One of the hunter's core strengths is great burst DPS.

Ya, the leather is nicer for DPS no doubt. But remember that pets get 35% of your Armour, so leather is more of a trade-off than pre-2.1. I'll still be stacking lots of leather, but I'm not going to trash my mail.

Definitely a good idea in any burst phase like Curator. I need to test what happens when you swap bows mid-combat. Depending on how much it disrupts your shot-timer, this may be the way to use Rapid Fire properly as a BM.

I'm inclined to say it's the other way around.

A MM Hunter would probably be using a Auto,Steady,Arcane/or/Multi,Auto,Steady style rotation.
With a 2.9 weapon and no haste beyond 15% for quiver, there is zero 'wiggle room' when you're putting 2 specials between autos.

The BM spec would only ever be putting 1 special between autos, and most of the time he'll have as much as a half sec of 'wiggle room'.

edit:
Matter of opinion, I suppose, but I tend to think of BM as the steady dps spec for Hunters.
Less reliance on crits, more on stacking AP and high shot speeds.

With BM, the X-bow is not very good. You don't shoot nearly as many steady shots. Rotations are all about designing good ones then finding the right bow to fit them.

Lag and wiggle room depends on your rotation and bow speed. I currently use a pretty intense MM rotation that I could never keep up without low lag and the /castsequence macros (yes, I use those). My BM rotation is going to be a lot easier. But it's nothing to do with the actual rotations themselves, it's how my bow fits into it.

My 3.00 clips my current rotation and it very tight, but that's because I should really be using a 3.10 or a 3.20. But I don't have any of those because I'm poor and lazy.

With a 2.70-2.30 and BM my future rotation will have good slack. But that's because there aren't any good 2.50 speed bows to choose from which would be ideal.

How tight the rotations are depends more on the bow itemization than the actual rotations.